Sterling does his writing assignments at his bio mom's house on LiveJournal so that it's super-easy to transfer them here and keep track of old ones.  But there have been other benefits, too.   Family friends and relatives have added him to their "friends list" as LiveJournal calls it, and comment on his assignments!  It's awesome.  It's good for me as his teacher, too.  Today, for example, I noticed that his punctuation is about the same quality as my father's punctuation.  Dad is dyslexic and has a hard time remembering where letters go, let alone commas.  It also reminds me that Sterling is a naturally interesting writer; he only needs mechanics help.  

I need to remember to pick up some batteries so that I can use my digital camera to get pictures of the kids activities.  On Thursday, all of their heads were clustered together over a bug, microscopes in hand.  I so wish I had a camera for that.

Verdi continues to say how much he loves school, every morning.   Bear has gone from being sad about not getting to do school, to being angry and acting out all day long.   His father says not only is he NOT going to pay for preschool materials, but he is not going to pay child support this month on time, either.  How I wish our library wasn't under construction!  I know I can think of something to do with him, I just don't think I have the time.  Any ideas are very welcome!  We've been doing a lot of cut, color, paste, molding clay, finding things which start with the letters he's learning, and counting games.  They are not challenging to him anymore.  He's looking for more.

You've been reading the blog, right?  So you know it always ends up at three-and-half hours, no matter what we do. 

Well, I added more stuff.   Doubled-up history.   Evening work right now, not later.  And new science, new music, and new art program.

The first day with the new stuff all integrated went well.  The kids were challenged trying to spell words with musical notes.  We loved the pocket microscopes from Stratton House.  Poor little Bear asked over and over, "Did you buy one for me, Mama?"  Finally he gave up and began to ask, "When I'm a big kid, I can have a microscope?" The kids sketched for quite awhile using the new drawing book (Lee Hammond) but didn't get anything finished yet.

So did we meet the state's five hours per day minimum?  Nope.  It took . . .  three-and-a-half hours!

Because I have temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), I spent most of my childhood convinced I was actually moving back and forth in time.  TLE causes deja vu, the feeling that one has already lived through a moment, as well as the opposite feeling, jamais vu, that one has just arrived in the moment from a different time period.  Those are quite interesting feelings to have right in a row.  It can lead one to feeling that she was way in the future and has just miraculously arrived back in the past. 

But this three-and-a-half hour thing is inexplicable.  Just as an experiment, I think tomorrow I am going to set the alarm clock for 11:30 and make the kids work past then.  That crazy person I try not to be half expects the world outside the dining room to freeze until we are done with school.

The geography stuff I picked out for next year arrived today and it looks fantastic!  I'm so excited to start planning.   I'm going to make an independent study guide with related music, science and art for my then-sixth-grader and schedule the awesome picture books I found for my then-second-grader to correlate with artsy-craftsy stuff.  Read-alouds too of course!  I love snuggling up with my kids and a book, I love watching their minds expand, but getting lots of new books is the best part of homeschooling.  (Okay, not really, I'm not that materialistic.  But it sure is a thrill.)

Here are the adjustments I have made to our program.

SCIENCE
I've completely given up on nature study.  As an emergency replacement, I bought a three-unit kit from Stratton House.  It's a bit below Sterling's level, but he's never worked with a microscope, even a pocket microscope, before.   I love that there is ZERO teacher planning or even teacher teaching. I just give them the worksheets, which guide them through the activities.  Looking over the lessons, I suspect it will take us two months to do all three units.   We like to do science every day.  I'm going to assign it while I'm putting the baby down for his nap.  It's the only subject I can trust them to seriously apply themselves to, even in my absence.

Once they are done with Stratton House, we're going to either do a second Stratton House kit, or do Great Science Adventures Botany.

MUSIC
I have added recorder to Verdi's day, and I'm seriously considering getting Sterling a recorder as well.   I also am going to do the Alfred Theory for Young Musicians workbooks with them.  They each come with a CD for ear training.  We're going to do this every morning, too.

ART
Drawing With Children turned out to be too zen for Sterling.  He's a very defensive child, which makes it difficult to get him to shift his thinking.  I'm still going to use it with Verdi & Bear.  I bought a Lee Hammond drawing book for Sterling which includes all the traditional tips about an eye between the eyes, and such like that. 

By the way, both art and music are required by New York State law.

Adding those subjects should make the day longer.  

LANGUAGE ARTS
I think the reason Sterling hates language arts is that he a) doesn't like the physical act of writing that he has to do when he applies grammar in an editing exercise, and b) doesn't see the point to the composition assignments he has been given (short stories, imaginary dialogue, journalling).  I'm considering buying Editor-in-Chief, the software version, so he can practice editing on a computer, and jumping into report writing, which I had scheduled for the last half of the year. 

I also think I might add poetry memorization.  That's something I want for Verdi right now anyway.

His reading, though, I'm not going to change.

MATH
I realized that area & perimeter will be on the state tests for Sterling this year, so I'm going to add in a Cuisenaire Rods' activity book on the subject.

BEAR
Bear needs more to do, so I think I'm going to ask his biological dad to pay for a Kumon early learner workbook or two, and especially a reading primer. 

NEXT YEAR
I've started planning next year's program.  I'm going to create a year-long geography program for all three kids using living books and hands-on activities.  I've already purchased the spine and the activity books and selected the read-alouds and readers that will best correlate.

Tonight, we finished the last chapter in our history read-aloud, The Birchbark House.  After the last line sunk in as the last, Verdi said (stuttering in his way), "Start it, read it, start it, over from the beginning again. Read the story again because I like being in the story."

"I'll tell you what Verdi.  You may have this book for your very own." 

Verdi burst into smile.  Bear cried out, "Can Verdi share it?"

There is a time warp in my dining room.  Yesterday, we did the entire week of history and math in one day and we STILL finished in four hours.   How is that possible?  And I don't have next week's photocopies made, so today we're going to have to fly by the seat of our pants.   Yikes.  I hate that.

Sterling (8yob) explained to me that even though he is good at writing, he does not want to be a writer when he grows up, so we can drop all of this language arts stuff from his curriculum.   I told him that it was necessary for work and college.  First he asked how it's necessary for work, so I described the reports various adult members of the family have made lately.  Then he said he wasn't sure he wanted to go to college.   I wish I had a picture of Brett's (dh's) face when I told him that: eyes popping out, just about bouncing off the far wall.  He grunted through gritted teeth, "All of my children . . . not optional . . . least some college . . ." before he managed to get out a final, "Urrrrgh . . .  I'll talk with him."

Verdi (6yo) was so excited that school was starting yesterday after our week off that he ran to the table shouting, "YAY! SCHOOL!"  He made both of his sentences cheerfully, then played Math-It for a good hour, and then finished the next segment assigned out of his reader, The Chalkbox Kid.  Then he snuggled with me on the couch and munched goldfish crackers while I read various history books to the children. 

Last night we had the best homeschool moment, though.  I was herding the children in the direction of the bunk beds when Bear broke rank and began to run in the opposite direction.  I got the others in bed, then chased after Bear.  He was in our luggage, still unpacked, from the weekend trip.  He was digging through but seemed to know exactly where the object of his search was located.  Finally he grabbed our history-related read-aloud, The Birchbark House.  "You have to read us Omakayas, Mama! "he said, handing me the book and then running ahead to get under his snuggly comforter.

I know that it is crazy to start thinking about next year already, but Sterling has been going faster and faster through his schoolwork.   He doesn't hit his groove and then go at that pace all year long.   He learns to do it, then he figures out a method for doing it faster.  Then he masters that method thus snips in half the time necessary to do it.   And on like this, forever.   It's like a ball rolling downhill.   It doesn't stop going faster at some point. 

On the other hand, I am thrilled that he is finally working at top potential again.  He was walking and talking in sentences before he was nine months old, and he read at 18 months.  But when he hit preschool, the progress stopped.  When we pulled him out public school in third grade, he was reading on a third grade level -- just as he had been since he was two. 

The public school people told us that because he continually learns faster and faster, skipping him a grade won't help.  He'll master the next level of materials slower at first, but eventually even faster than the kids in that grade level.  Thus, he needed an entirely alternative type of education, one the school did not have the resources to provide.   They actually brought dh in to a meeting to brief him on their plan for slowing Sterling down!

Lately, I sympathize. I am not sure we have the resources to do this, either.  We can not lay out another $500 for another year of school materials so soon.   If I had known that Verdi & Bear's dad was going to help buy their books I could have spent more on Sterling.  But he conveniently offered to help AFTER school started.

The kids want to learn Spanish and Japanese, they constantly want more and more books to read, they want music lessons, and we just don't have the money for these things.  At 3, 6 & 8, they're not old enough to help earn the money or to barter.  The children's library is closed for renovation and most of the books aren't available anymore.   I almost feel like by not working so that I can homeschool, I give up the money necessary to homeschool.

Maybe we should move to a state with a charter school that provides funds to homeschoolers.  I hate the idea of government interference in our day-to-day lives, but I do believe the state has an interest in the at least basic education of it's citizens, and I also believe that the charter school homeschool idea provides a good model of a voucher-based educational system.

We did not do a moment of lessons this week.

On Friday we found out that (9yo stepson) Sterling's mom was going on a totally different schedule and would no longer be able to drop him off every morning.  Yay! we thought, the  perfect excuse to move him in with us for most of the week!   We planned to spend the weekend cleaning out the office/storage area and turning it into an office/guest room.  However, on Sunday and Monday, the grownups and the baby (but none of the kids) I had a bone-aching, sniffling, wheazing flu.   There was no way we could sort & move the boxes of merchandise in the office those days.  So Sterling stayed with his mom, and we had no school. 

On Tuesday we were all set to clean out the office when the phone rang.  It was Verdi and Bear's biological father, who was surprise! coming into town that very night to see the kids after more than a year of being far, far away.   He only is allowed supervised visitation, so I had to arrange that, and really fast.  Wednesday was eaten up by his seeing the boys. 

We just gave up on Thursday.  It seemed silly, I guess, to do just one day of school.  Because Friday we have to go off to our various destinations: Sterling and his mom to a grandparents 90th birthday or something like that, and me and the boys to the Albany Free School for a skillshare.

Next week we'll double up!  We all miss lessons.

On Monday, we all went out enthusiastically to the patch of field between the convenience store and the Chinese take-out.  But the children were loathe to write observations. 

Them: What should I write?
Me:  Observations like: where we are, wind direction, time of day, what's nearby or on it . . .
Sterling:  How am I supposed to know the wind direction?
Me:  Use your skin?
Verdi:  I don't want to.
Sterling:  Wha?
Bear:  Mama, will you write mine? Mama, will you write mine? Mama, will you write mine? Mama, will you write mine? Mama, will you write mine? MAMA! MAMA!
Me:  Feel the way the wind is blowing.
Verdi:  (crying) Do I have to write?  I'm not good at writing!
Sterling:  Um... no. 
Bear: (shoves notebook in my face)

Then the kids couldn't find what they had chosen to draw in the field guide, the only field guide we have.   That was it for me.   We went home defeated.

Yesterday we set out again.  This time I asked them to notice three new living things in an old walkway we always take.  Sterling pointed out the first three things he noticed, all of which he has fondled, picked or discussed before.  Halfway through the walk, Verdi plopped his butt down on the sidewalk. 

"What are you doing?"
"I'm sitting very still and silent so the squirrel will come back around the tree."
"Well, I'm on this side, and there's no squirrel.   The rest of us scared it."
"Please?"
"Um .  . . okay. Everyone be really quiet."
Sterling rolls his eyes.
Bear:  Are we being quiet Mama?
Me: nods head, puts finger to mouth
Bear:  MAMA? Are WE being QUIET for Verdi's SQUIRREL?
Me:  Be quiet or I will punish you.
At that point the baby started fussing.  He did not want to nurse.  He just wanted out of the carrier so he could crawl around and explore.

I was thrilled beyond words when I saw the dreary sky this morning.  It rained, so we stayed in and did drawing instead.

Today we were scheduled to read a pronunciation guide list of Native American words.   I skipped it, looked up in the index something related to our pottery project, and read that instead.  Did you know that when a pot was buried with it's deceased owner, the deceased's relatives would punch a hole in the bottom of the pot so it would be dead too?  

Maybe the author of the curriculum was using a different edition of the book than we have?  Maybe she left the 2 off the 26; that accounts for the reading assignment weirdness.  Or maybe she just didn't correlate all of these readings and projects.  Some days they go together nicely!

Anyway... I finally gave up on making Sterling listen to The Birchbark House.  He is independently reading Anpao instead.  He likes it.  I read more Birchbark House to Verdi today, as well as Tree in the Trail, and we enjoyed it very much.  I do like the book.  The descriptive language draws me right in.  I emerge feeling like I've time travelled.  I thought he wasn't paying attention, but Verdi's occasional comments have proved that he is just as drawn in as I am.  Yay! 

This morning, Bear is dressed and fed but back to sleep as we await Sterling's arrival. 

Hearing the van pull up, Verdi has come to the dining room table.  I've grabbed the baby and I am rigging up the Wee Sing America CD.  We all wait, projecting our "hi" and "good morning" into the living room, while Sterling removes his shoes and socks.  (We are a shoe-free household.)  Sterling tells me he finished all of his reading homework and says, "That was quite a feat since it was 250 pages and I was in the early hundreds!"  I tell him - and it occurs to me now that this was stupid - that it's not so bad to do 150 pages over a weekend.  Note to self: praise Sterling's accomplishments.

As soon as Sterling seats himself, I hand him his song booklet and press play.  We yawn and fiddle with our pages and anxiously await the part where we can sing.  "We Love The USA" always sounds awkward as we sing it, perhaps because as peace activists we often drag the kids to protests, socialize with anarchists, and encourage respectful dissent.  But I want the kids to know the difference between loving your country and loving your government.  The kids mouth a JFK quote and then we listen to one more song.   As soon as "Oh say can you see . . . " hits my ears, I remember that I was supposed to look up the words "spangle" and "ramparts" for the kids but have forgotten again.  Oh well, tonight I'll look up all of the words in the song and have it ready for tomorrow.

The music ends, and the kids toss their songbooks back to me while I put on Queen, Greatest Hits Volume II (Sterling's fav).   I hit play, lower the volume and give them their workbooks: Handwriting Without Tears, Italic Book D, Wordly Wise 6, Write! E.   They know from routine what pages to do next and how many, but I tell them anyway.   Sterling digs into with just an "mm-hm" to acknowledge my orders and Verdi opens his book and begins to dawdle. 

I pick up the fussing baby and then hand him a magnetic calendar to play with.  I place him back on the floor with it.  Then I take an index card and jot down the page numbers we're doing for history today and look over which activities we'll be doing.  I want the kids to do their timelines today and decide I'll let them cut them out themselves later.  I look up Maya and Aztec stuff in our Eyewitness book on the subject, since our curriculum schedules the kids to place figures about that but not to actually read about it.  (Geez! Good thing I had the Eyewitness book already!)

The baby gets bored with the calendar and I set him over at the basket of toys I have placed in the middle of the living room for him.   VErdi jumps out of his seat.  "I'd better turn that toy on for him!"  It's a barking, jumping dog that the baby has.  "No!" I say.  Sterling turns to look. "It's loud.  Too loud.  But thanks for thinking of him."

Verdi announces he is done and Sterling announces he wishes he was done.  Bear toddles out holding two stuffed animals and looking sleepy.  "Can I do homeschool too, Mama?"  I give him Get Ready for the Code and a crayon and remove the stuffed animals to a safer place (away from drooly baby brothers).  I give Verdi his Wordly Wise assignment and explain it.  Meanwhile Sterling can not find the last two possessives to correct in his editing (Write!) assignment.  I hunt for the TM and he goes on to his Italic.

Aha!  I have found the TM.  To free my arms to look through his books and the TM, I allow Terran to have the crayon tin.  He climbs completely in and sits in it.    Sterling's issue is that he confuses adjectives and possessive nouns.   While I am explaining this to Sterling, Verdi announces that he has dropped his pencil.   I replace the pencil and remind Verdi that if he's writing, it won't fall out his hand.

Sterling finishes his penmanship and writing, asking, "Is there anything else I have to do?"  I remind him of his Wordly Wise.  "Just skip to the narrative."

"Okay! Can I do my work on the couch?"

"Sure!"

The dog is barking to go outside.  I think I should finish this up for now because the next assignment involves looking at a website.  More later!

You all probably noticed that I posted only the very beginning of our day.  It became busier after that and has blurred together in my memory.   On Monday, I will try to post as I go.

I am so used to using LiveJournal that HomeschoolerBlogger seems awkward.  I'm sure it's just me.  Eventually I will find a spare moment to figure out how to respond to comments by friends, but for now, hi and thanks for friending me!  I've been mostly adding folks I come across on the various WinterPromise groups.

I awoke when the alarm goes off, or rather, on, at 6:30.  I sit up immediately to turn it off, extracting myself from between sleeping baby and sleeping three-year-old.  I grab jeans and a tee, which color I can not see in the dark (purple, turns out) and go into the bathroom to wash, comb, brush, etc.  I peek into the boys bedroom, but Verdi is still asleep.  I lay out his clothes for him.

I make myself some tea, wander out to the living room, and am stunned by the mess all over the dining room table.  I always straighten up before I go to sleep.   Brett must have been packaging all night long (shipping things to our eBay customers) and then crashed, too exhausted to straighten up.  He often works until 5 AM.   I find him on the couch, curled up with the throw quilt, and tell him to go to bed.   Then I quickly toss scraps of cardboard and paper away, noting that Bear's toys are mixed in with the mess -- so he must have gotten up in  the middle of the night and spent some time with Brett.  It happens.

While sipping my tea, I check my blogs, email and forums.  Then I work a little bit on a secret homeschool project I've been developing, until I hear the baby cry.  As I go in to change his diaper, I notice that Verdi is up.  "Here are your clothes," I whisper and point.

With two kids dressed, I direct Verdi to make himself some breakfast.  He gets himself a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats with organic 2% milk.  I sit back down at the computer while the baby nurses.

When Verdi is done, I ask him if he wants to play with the baby for awhile.  He agrees, so I put the two ofthem in the living room with a ball to roll while I do some dishes, hoping to wake Bear.  No luck.  I notice that he's dressed -- he must have grabbed clothes when he woke up in the night.  I decide to leave him alone. 

I look over the lesson plan for the day - just a brief glance.  I notice that Frindle is missing, Verdi's current literature assignment, and we'll need it later  this morning.  Not able to locate it, I remember that I wanted to blog a typical day, so I sit down to make this post before Sterling arrives.  Any minute we will hear Linda's van pull up and him come dashing up to the door. 

I'd better go do my morning devotional quick!  I've taken to going out on the porch each morning to ground and center myself.  I've tried vitamins, other supplements, changing my diet and my schedule, but I find the best thing to keep me calm, energetic and focused during the long day is a simple grounding and centering meditation.

I'm sick today, some sort of a flu that has been going around.  I told Linda not to drop Sterling off this morning and let Verdi just do his math and penmanship alone.  Now, about 6 hours after Sterling was due, Verdi says, "I wonder what is taking Sterling so long to get here."

"He's not coming, Verdi.  I'm too sick to teach today."

"You mean we're not homeschooling today?"

"Not today."

"But I really love homeschooling.  I want to do it every day!"

Last night he told me that his favorite part is the paper projects.  We've only made three (a precontact map of North American peoples, a 3D map of migration over the Bering Straight, and a Hopi people coloring page), but I guess they left a big impression.  Wait until we do the crafts.  Verdi will be in homeschool heaven.

Winter Promise

I am amazed at how fast the children go through their work.   Even with the crafts that are scheduled in Winter Promise, we were done by 11:30 today.  I had them play Great States, a U.S. geography board game, instructing Sterling to let Bear win every third attempt so that he did not feel excluded or frustrated.

They love this history curricula.  They like the whole program in general.  They like the books, they like making the cool crafts, they like that all three of them get to do it together, and I think they like that I really like it.  Yesterday I asked Bear what he liked the most about his first day of homeschool.  He said, "You really love being the teacher."  Today we saw how all the books correlate.  In fact, at one point, we commented about my having read what was essentially the same sentence in four books.  I don't feel guilty about spending $400 on the Winter Promise program anymore.  It was definitely worth it.


Problems With Verdi

But I am having a problem with Verdi.  Not with motivation - he really loves the books and the crafts and wants to do them.   The problem is that he gets lost, distracted, daydreamy and absent-minded.   Unless he is completely alone with me, he begins to get silly.  He forgets what he's supposed to be doing.  He jokes around instead of working.   He sharpens his pencils over and over instead of coloring, then he bursts into tears because he hasn't finished his project and everyone else has moved on to the next one.  It takes him a long, long time to finish anything and he's very prone to flitting about, mentally or bursting into almost hysterical sillies.  So he doesn't get anything done unless I sit with him, alone, watch for when he's distracted, and refocus him very gently (any impatience on my part and he'll cry). 

The one except is handwriting.  Last year it was impossible to get him to do a workbook page.  I tried every bribe, punishment, reasoning, lecture, special adaptations and tricks that I could find but we still ended up with unfinished pages and a very upset little boy most of the time.  Lest you think I am crazy for worrying about a six-year-old boy doing penmanship well, let me tell you that he has FANTASTIC fine motor skills, drawing small details in his artwork constantly.   This year, I tell him to do a page and he independently reads the directions and completes the page with perfect work and without getting distracted!  What's the deal?

I'm worried.  He's not doing math because distracted (and that's on the computer, which he loves).   He's definitely the sort of kid who forgets math if he goes a week without doing it.  We use manipulatives, real life applications, computer programs and  games.  There's no reason he shouldn't be absorbed. 

We had a spectacular first day.   All of my fears were for naught.

Fear #1:  Terran will wake up 10 minutes after Sterling arrives, necessitating an interruption first thing in the AM.

Yay! #1: He got up at 7,  so I changed him and dressed him then.  He fell back to asleep afterwards.  When he awoke at 8:15 I didn't need to change, dress or feed him, so there was no major interruption.

Fear #2:  Bear and Sterling will antagonize each other.

Yay! # 2: Bear was so occupied with his own "schoolwork" that he didn't have a spare moment to get into Sterling's hair.    Sterling did not say a single word about Bear's quality of work. 

Fear #3:  I planned too much and we'll be all day or can stuff at the last minute.

Yay! #3:  We finished early.  We didn't do one project because the others ran over, but it was listed as optional in the Teacher's Manual anyay.  We had to switch in the middle of starting out the door to nature to doing health instead because of rain, and I was so prepared that all I had to do was grab a book and jot down an assignment in Sterling's planner.

Fear #4:  The kids will hate the new history program which I LOVE so much that I spent $400 on it.

Yay! #4:  The kids liked it.   They liked being read to, and they liked looking at picture books together.   Sterling was excited that he had his own advanced reading.  They did think the first historical fiction selection was boring but first chapters often are.  Verdi, as usual,  was super slow getting his artwork done (coloring and labelling a pre-contact map of American Indian cultures) but that gave me time to orient Sterling to his assignment book.  Bear was thrilled that he could color a map too and livid that he didn't have a timeline notebook to put his work in.

Fear # 5:  I am crazy to homeschool in a structured way with a preschooler and a baby.
 
Yay! #5: 

Terran took a box of crayons and scattered and ate them, then did the same thing with the kids magnetic calendar thingy, Sterling's bowl of goldfish crackers, the bag of colored pencils and Bear's bowl of grapes.  It seems to be a theme with him this week but it kept him really well occupied. 

He stayed awake until like 1:30!  He did nap-nurse around 10 for 20 minutes though, while I was reading.  This was good.  I'd rather have him crawling around wide awake than fussy and sleepy and clingy.

Bear worked on the letter "F" in his workbook, Get Ready for the Code.  He did several pages, well, before getting bored. 

Then I drew thick marker lines on paper for him and had him practice cutting on the lines.  From there he grabbed his stamps and markers, so I showed him how to use them together.  He loved this and made several interesting "tickets," he said (we went to the State Fair yesterday).  Not bad for 3.5, right?

Fear #6:  It's all too much for Verdi, reading & writing-wise.

Yay! #6:  The only time he balked was when I asked him to label his own map the second  time.   He had to write in, "INUIT."   He grabbed his belly and said,  "That's a long word and I need some double fiber bread right now."  LOL!   I told him to think of it as just an I.  When he was done with that letter, I said, think of it as just an N.

Verdi did the worst of all 4 of them today.  He kept getting distracted or wild, and really didn't stay with all of his readings to the end.  Hm.  I know he's a visual learner, not kinesthetic... hm.  I'll have to give it some thought.

Yay!  I found three drawing-from-nature studies via video that the kids can do on rainy days.  My three-year-old is going through a major bunny stage right now, too!  He's going to LOVE drawing a bunny with his brothers!  And these are by my favorite children's book illustrator ever!  Yippee!

http://www.janbrett.com/video/video_main_page.htm

Yesterday, Verdi (6) read Tigers at Twilight by Mary Pope Osborne in two hours.   It's a beginning chapter book at early third grade level.  This morning, he read The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl in about two hours.  This is also a third grade level chapter book.  

Because just a week ago, Verdi was still going slowly on his beginner chapter books and mostly reading picture books, I selected, and have already scheduled, easy chapter books for his literature this year.  I'll have to change my plan. 

Were he enrolled in that imaginary ideal school, we would have placed him in second grade language arts for sure and then he would have changed right before the start of the new year and been bored all year long.  I'm so excited that I can turn our program on a dime to meet his needs.

Actually, I probably would not planned a reading program for him this year at all, since he's clearly very good at balancing his own reading between books that challenge but don't overwhelm and easier, good reads.   I know he's capable of growing and learning every thing he needs without any cow prod.   I chose a literature program that he and Sterling (8) could do together because Verdi LOVES doing things together with Sterling, and Sterling becomes easily frustrated when Verdi gets to unschool subjects he has to study.